


Limbo

by emjam



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Angst, Gen, Identity Issues, Kind of?? Idk if im using that tag right, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-15 22:28:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9260732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emjam/pseuds/emjam
Summary: Once you spend over 30 years living other people's lives, do they become your own? Once you drift in and out of identities like hopping from place to place, are you just as nameless as you were once homeless?[After giving up Stanford's identity, he doesn't know how to go back to Stanley Pines.]





	

**Author's Note:**

> Idk what this is but I've written about it on 2 separate occasions and felt the need to get what I had out there

When Ford insisted that he had his name back along with everything else, Stan was forced to finally shed his brother’s identity only to wonder where the rest of him was. He had been Stanford for so long that being Stanley was a foreign idea to him.

He knew what Stanley _once_ was, sure, but now Stanley was a dead man. He had died decades ago, and nobody even knew him. Nobody cared.

Back then, it seemed almost a relief to crawl out of Stanley’s skin and into that of another, to shove down the horrible mess that was his actual self and be someone else, because he sure as hell knew that Stanley didn’t have much going for him. It’s not like anyone would miss the guy anyways.

Calling himself Stanford meant feeling like something for once. Their family would send holiday cards under the assumption that Ford was still there. While better than being the failure that was Stanley, taking Ford’s identity wasn’t the best either, of course. It also felt icky and wrong, like he had outright killed his brother, and in reality, he might as well have.

Now the cover of Stanford was yanked away, but Stanley was already long gone, unreachable. He was nameless. To slip from the role of Stanford back into the old identity of Stanley would be like stepping down into a dirty, wet grave. Stanley had lived and died as a high school dropout criminal that never did any good for anyone. For him to go back to that was for him to become nothing again.

It was obvious, in hindsight, that Stan would _have_ to be Stanley again, no matter how Ford felt when he came back. The harder thing to realize, though, was that by the time Ford returned, Stanley had been pushed so far back that the name didn't feel like his own anymore. It was as if he didn't have one. No one had called him that in such a long time. Once you spend over 30 years living other people's lives, do they become your own? Once you drift in and out of identities like hopping from place to place, are you just as nameless as you were once homeless?

He had thrown away the identity, but there wasn’t much to toss in the first place.

Stanley Pines was shapeless, a shadow lilting unwanted somewhere, and he was nameless. He was a series of rooms of memories and emotions straining for a common roof to hold them under. After all, Stanley Pines was so extremely buried under the other names and faces, it might as well be that one day (after day after grueling day, desperately trying to bring back the only person that once made Stanley exist) he disappeared completely. Someone can be buried so deep in the ground that they are never found. He reached down into himself and merely kept reaching into vapidity, kept trying to dig below the surface and find even a limp body, but all he grabbed ahold of was his brother, and the twins, and this damned shack, and this equally damned town.

He didn’t want to have to give up his place in this family, who only knew him as Stanford. He didn’t want to go through the pain of never being able to see the kids again, or the heartbreak of his home and work being taken from him, or the cold truth of his brother’s apathy. He didn’t want to be a ghost in the world again. He didn’t want to be Stanley Pines, whoever that was. Under Stanford, he had something. Under Stanley, he had nothing. And the limbo in between felt safer than the latter.

But it was a fact that Stanley Pines was the only option he had left. And he didn’t want Stanley Pines to exist.


End file.
